The Stupid Thread 2 (Part 2)

So teaching about human sexuality in a college level psychology course is now not okay. FL is is just getting ridiculous.

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According to the College Board.

Yeah, the Progressives left down there are. Just imagine removing AP classes as revenge for not being allowed to teach little Martin that he can be Martina if he feels like it.

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It’s a college-level course. The people talking it are generally somewhere between 16 and 18.

I’d assume that the reason the college board is recommending the class not be taught is because of the unit on psychosexual theorists (Freud, mostly) and arousal theory. Not because of queer content. The former are fully fleshed-out units/topics, the latter is a footnote that amounts for maybe one multiple choice question on the final exam.

Florida is shooting its students in the foot when they’re competing to get into out-of-state schools by effectively denying them the ability to take several of these tests. And doing this is disproportionately impactful to poorer students, who can stand to benefit relatively more by entering college as a sophmore and saving a year of tuition. These same students will also have a harder time getting the resources to self-study for the test if they’re dead-set on taking it.

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Gender dysphoria has long been recognized as a problem of mind and has been taught in psychology courses for ages.

The best treatment for that can discussed/debated, but denying the fact it exists is the same as denying that Hinduism exists because you’re a Christian (for example).

I would prefer topics like these taught in a classroom as opposed to students “learning” about it through some BS “influencer’s” TikTok video.

Bingo.I am hearing more and more about this. Out of state schools already don’t like to accept Florida students because the quality of education is already lower than many other places. This kind of stuff just deepens that ravine.

That’s a misreading of the article. The College Board said it was an essential part of the course however, according to Florida’s laws, it’s problematic and since they won’t change the content of the course, it can’t be taught in Florida. In short, the Board says it’s ok but Florida says it’s not.

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Nobody tell him.

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I understand this. I would assume any prohibitions against anything taught in an AP Psychology class are being imposed in order to get prohibitions against teaching 8 year olds that they may be other genders, etc. removed from the books.

Obviously, no one(not many anyway) is going to come out and say, “We need to get rid of this law so that we can teach little Jimmy that he can be, and maybe even is, little Jenny.” They’re going to say, “We need to get rid of this law because it’s preventing us from teaching your high school students a college-level Psychology course.”

See above.

That would be the assumption they want you to make but it was implemented in the opposite manner. The initial law prevented teaching those things to younger kids. It was then expanded, not by law but by executive fiat of the DeSantis appointed board of education in FL to go through high school.

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Why not just put an age limit on the content, then? Sex Ed and detailed accounts of historical travesties are already handled this way in the vast majority of jurisdictions.

Nobody thinks kindergarteners should be taught about, say, the holocaust or trench warfare, but that doesn’t mean that legislation should be in place to fully remove that content from the K-12 curriculum. Especially because this class is almost universally offered as an elective, and the entire set of content taught is listed online, so students know exactly what they’re signing up for.

I’m not sure you understood my post. They don’t want an age limit, because they don’t want prohibitions against teaching little kids these things.

I understand that.

AP classes are offered in high schools. Students earn college credit after taking the class and scoring a three or higher. AP Psych is typically offered to Seniors, so 17 year olds.

Sort of. I, as a parent, have had these discussions with both of my kids. I don’t want teachers talking to my kids about sexuality.

However, as a teacher, I felt comfortable holding space for kids that felt comfortable with me.

The disconnect, in my opinion, is teachers that feel the need to educate kids in a manner that is contradictory to their parents. I did want to offer thoughtful discussion for my students without espousing any personal beliefs.

The difficulty was balancing discussion without offending parents - having an open discussion was often offensive to parents that fell to the extremes.

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To be clear, the College Board is a for profit company that administers the SAT Exams and AP Exams. They make a shit ton of money training teachers to teach AP classes, and a shit ton of money administering AP Exams.

In my experience teaching for twenty years, most parents abdicate teaching their kids, parenting their kids. I taught inner city, and high end. Most parents expected me to teach their kids to read (seventh grade in Brooklyn) and how to think (AP Language in Plainview).

Most parents are ill equipped to deal with anything other than ordinary kids. They expect the school district to do it. In the extreme, my wife deals with a fourth grader than cannot clean herself after pooping. Her parents expect the classroom teacher to walk the student to the nurse’s office and to have the nurse wipe her after defecating.

On the other side of the coin, I had a student text his mother in 10H English that he was bored. She called my department chair, and I had a sit down immediately after the class because Johnny was bored.

May be if Johnny wasn’t on his phone he would not be bored.

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My wife teaches AP chem and bio so I’m familiar with it.

And those things you mentioned are why I decided to cut my teaching career short.

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I still see teaching as a noble pursuit. It’s just not what we think when we get into it.

I taught English. I had dreams of expounding on the philosophy of composition, the beauty of diction and syntax. The critical thinking associated with explicating a sonnet.

I did not expect to counsel kids that saw me as a father figure. I did not expect to hear about sisters being raped by uncles, to hear about drive by shootings, to hear about gang violence blocks from my school.

I did not expect to be vilified by parents for teaching district approved books like To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye.

I did not expect my administrators to not back me up while teaching those novels, canonical American literature.

I did not expect that strife to drive me to substance abuse, to depression, to retirement.

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In my experience, so take it for what it is, teachers care about the kids, administrators care about their jobs.

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Trump’s about to have his bail revoked because he’s the 2nd dumbest person on the internet.

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That’s the kind of rhetoric his worshippers, oops I mean constituents, love though.

Gotta keep up the pandering.

Once you commit to something you need to be all-in. I’d feel the same way as this gal if I got an eyeball tattoo and things somehow didn’t work out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/woman-who-went-blind-after-tattooing-her-eyeballs-has-no-regrets/ss-AA1eRIFk?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=4284a63ed0614e75b068654dd04592cd&ei=25

I wouldn’t expect a rational conclusion from anybody who decides thats a good idea.

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